January 2014 Archive

Wow, wake up and it’s a whole new world – a central concept of many contemplative belief systems and a daily reality on the computer industry. I woke up this morning to a pleseant New England day with low single-digit temperatures under a brilliant blue sky, and lo and behold, by the time I got to work, along came the news that Lenovo had acquired IBM’s x86 server business, essentially lock, stock and barrel. For IBM the deal is compelling, given that it has decided to move away from the volume hardware manufacturing business, giving them a long-term source for its needed hardware components, much as they did with PCs and other volume hardware in the past. Lenovo gains a world-class server product line for its existing channel organization that vastly expands its enterprise reach, along with about 7,500 engineering, sales and marketing employees who understand the enterprise server business.

What’s Included

The rumors have been circulating for about a year, but the reality is still pretty impressive – for $2.3 Billion in cash and stock, Lenovo acquired all x86 systems line, including the entire rack and blade line, Flex System, blade networking, and the newer NeXtScale and iDataPlex. In addition, Lenovo will have licensed access to many of the surrounding software and hardware components, including SmartCLoud Entry, Storewize, Director, Platform computing, GPFS, etc.

IBM will purchase hardware on an OEM basis to continue to deliver value-added integrated systems such as Pure Application and Pure Data systems.

Wow, wake up and it’s a whole new world – a central concept of many contemplative belief systems and a daily reality on the computer industry. I woke up this morning to a pleseant New England day with low single-digit temperatures under a brilliant blue sky, and lo and behold, by the time I got to work, along came the news that Lenovo had acquired IBM’s x86 server business, essentially lock, stock and barrel. For IBM the deal is compelling, given that it has decided to move away from the volume hardware manufacturing business, giving them a long-term source for its needed hardware components, much as they did with PCs and other volume hardware in the past. Lenovo gains a world-class server product line for its existing channel organization that vastly expands its enterprise reach, along with about 7,500 engineering, sales and marketing employees who understand the enterprise server business.

What’s Included

The rumors have been circulating for about a year, but the reality is still pretty impressive – for $2.3 Billion in cash and stock, Lenovo acquired all x86 systems line, including the entire rack and blade line, Flex System, blade networking, and the newer NeXtScale and iDataPlex. In addition, Lenovo will have licensed access to many of the surrounding software and hardware components, including SmartCLoud Entry, Storewize, Director, Platform computing, GPFS, etc.

IBM will purchase hardware on an OEM basis to continue to deliver value-added integrated systems such as Pure Application and Pure Data systems.

What IBM Keeps

IBM will keep its mainframe, Power Systems including its Flex System Power systems, and its storage business, and will both retain and expand its service and integration business, as well as provide support for the new Lenovo server offerings.

Forrester has just published our forecast for the 2014-2015 global tech market (January 2, 2014, “A Better But Still Subpar Global Tech Market In 2014 And 2015”), and we are predicting that business and government purchases of information technologies (IT) will grow by 6.2% in US dollars in 2014, and by 5.5% in exchange-rate-adjusted or local currency terms. (Note that this data includes purchases of computer equipment, communications equipment, software, IT consulting and systems integration services, and IT outsourcing services, but does not include purchases of telecommunications services.) The US dollar growth rate will be distinctly better than the 1.6% growth in US dollars in 2013, though constant currency growth will be only somewhat better than the 4.3% growth in 2013. Still, the global tech market won’t see strong growth until 2015, and even then the 8.1% US dollar and 6.9% local currency growth rates will be well below the double-digit growth rates of the late 1990s and 2000 era.

Three interconnected and reinforcing themes will define the global tech market this year: